


Nobody's Captain

by jimmytiberius



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover, I hope, M/M, Not as crack as it sounds, Time Travel AU, Will ultimately contain some actual feelings if I write the rest of it right, coffee shop AU, suspend your disbelief
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jimmytiberius/pseuds/jimmytiberius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers wakes up in a hospital full of impossibly advanced technology he doesn’t recognize, with no idea where he is or how he got there, and all he can think is, <i>not again.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody's Captain

**Author's Note:**

> Not proofread or betaed because I suck, please tell me if there are typos or if I got anything glaringly wrong about the canon. I have no idea where I'm going with this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suspend your disbelief for the setup, please, because I know it would be a lot harder for Steve to get any semblance of a life together but let's just chalk it down to him being Captain America and leave the rest deliberately vague so we can get on with it. This plot bunny bit me on the ass hard and wouldn't let up until I wrote at least the first chapter. Some of the tags refer to future chapters, so don't worry, Gaila will be making more than just a cameo (she's my fave).  
> 

Steve Rogers wakes up in a hospital full of impossibly advanced technology he doesn’t recognize, with no idea where he is or how he got there, and all he can think is, not again.

The doctor on duty, a dark-haired man a few years older than Steve who introduces himself as McCoy, asks if he remembers what happened. Steve squints. “I was in San Francisco…” he ventures, hoping it’s still called that in whatever decade he’s ended up in now. “With Tony. We were fighting this weird creature, got caught off guard, I didn’t even have my suit on, there was some glowing light, I got hit on the head. That’s all I got.”

“Tony, huh?” McCoy looks vaguely concerned. “We didn’t find anyone else near you.”

Of course not. “Look, this might sound strange…” Steve wishes he didn’t have to ask. Last time, SHIELD had known everything that had happened, and he hadn’t had to explain himself at all. This time, he can already tell, things will be different. “But what’s the date?”

McCoy responds as if patients ask that all the time, and maybe they do. “May 3th.”

“No, I mean… What year?”

Now he’s getting a look from the doctor, thick dark eyebrows drawing up over expressive eyes. “2256.”

Steve lets his head fall back on the pillow. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

~

He’s not injured in any way that the doctors can detect, just a little achy, and he plays off the whole from-the-past thing like it was a joke so they won’t stick him in a lab somewhere, so they release him the next morning. To where, though, he doesn’t know. He’s got $60 in his wallet and a credit card that expired almost 250 years ago. Amazingly enough, though, San Francisco hasn’t really changed much in the last two centuries. It’s not New York, but it’ll do for now. That same day, he manages to get a job in a coffee shop – they still have those – by the power of his perfect smile and baby blues alone. Steve may be out of practice at sweet-talking his way into places, but he’ll never forget what he learned during the Depression when the threat of starvation was looming, even if he never really thought he’d need those skills again. 

Luckily, he doesn’t need as much sleep these days as he did then, and the roughness of the pavement under his head doesn’t bother him after the conditions he got used to in the war. But it’s tough to keep a job when you have no way to keep yourself clean and no clothes but the ones on your back, so he’s grateful at the end of the week when he gets his first paycheck and a pocketful of tips (mostly from college-age girls who giggle and fawn over him at the counter) and he can pay for a night in a seedy motel on the wrong side of town with an actual shower. The money is strange-looking now, but it’s still got numbers on it, and he finds a store that seems reasonably priced and picks up a couple new shirts and some underwear. There’s soap in the motel bathroom that he uses to wash his jeans out in the sink, and they’re still damp when he pulls them on in the morning, but they’re all he has. Last time, he had SHIELD looking out for him. This time, he has nothing. But he’s Steve Rogers, and he survives.

~

It doesn’t take Steve long to realize that most of the customers he sees are cadets at something called Starfleet Academy. He asks his coworkers about it vaguely, trying to pretend he already knows the basics and he’s just trying to fill in the details because he’s new in town. Of course, they want to know where he’s from, so he spins an elaborate backstory about a small town in Iowa (why Iowa, he doesn’t know) and being stuck working in his father’s store after high school and needing a change, any change, and leaving on a whim with nothing. It explains why he’s so unkempt, at least, and they seem less suspicious after that. Or, at least, suspicious in different ways. 

He learns that Starfleet is some kind of futuristic version of the military, and there are spaceships, real actual spaceships, that leave right from San Francisco and go to all kinds of places all over the galaxy. There are more aliens out there, not just Asgardians, although he wonders vaguely if Thor is still alive and whether he might be able to get in touch. Some of the aliens even come right into this coffee shop. There’s a girl with bright green skin and flaming red hair in what he thinks is a cadet’s uniform (she’ll drink anything as long as it’s sweet), and a man with dark hair and pointed ears that might be an officer of some kind (he always orders this incredibly bitter tea), and so many others. They’re all amazing, truly, and he plays up his genuine awe and astonishment, trying to make himself seem as harmless as possible, until finally one of his coworkers (a black woman in her early thirties named Joanne) mentions that her brother has a basement room he’s looking to rent and if Steve wants to get out of the motel then maybe she could see about getting him a deal. Steve doesn’t have to play up how grateful he is at the offer.

~

The first time Jim Kirk walks in the door, Steve notices him immediately. Maybe it’s the swagger, or the smirk, or the fact that he seems to be dragging a very familiar-looking doctor along behind him. He won’t realize until later that what really caught his eye was the vulnerability on the man’s face when he didn’t think anyone was looking. In the here and now, Steve just registers a good-looking guy in a cadet’s uniform with a mouth that never stops moving and a curl to his lips that reminds him, heartstoppingly, of Tony.

“What can I get for you?” Steve asks, pushing down the sudden urge to ask if the man’s last name is Stark, even though his looks are all wrong. If anything, the guy looks more like him, or possibly Thor, all golden blond and square-jawed, nothing like Tony except in his demeanor.

“Double shot of espresso,” the man responds, and Steve picks up a cup and a marker.

“Name?” The question seems to come as a surprise to the cadet, and he exchanges a glance with the doctor before answering, “Uh, Jim. Jim Kirk.” Steve writes “Jim” on the side of the cup, then starts a large black coffee for “Leonard“ – “No, his name is Bones!” “Leonard” – and puts Tony out of his mind while he takes their money, prepares their drinks, and sends them on their way. Jim seems to give Steve a calculating look as he takes his espresso, but Leonard (is it Dr. McCoy from the hospital, or is he imagining things?) seems agitated, muttering about flight simulators and pulling at Jim’s sleeve, so they don’t linger. The second they’re gone, though, Joanne and another barista, Daniela, are flanking him, all aflutter.

“Don’t you know who that was?” breathes Daniela, staring at Steve. “He told you his name and everything. Jim Kirk.”

Steve looks blank, and Joanne makes a tutting noise on his other side. “You really did grow up under a rock, didn’t you? George Kirk was his father. The hero?”

Daniela looks appalled at Steve’s lack of reaction to the name George Kirk. “He saved about a zillion people on the USS Kelvin in ’33 and died in the process. You really never heard about that in wherever the hell you were from? I swear he was from Iowa too. You must’ve studied him in school.”

“I was, uh, homeschooled,” Steve invents. Why the hell had he picked Iowa of all places to say he was from? Should’ve stuck with Brooklyn. “My parents were kind of old-fashioned. They didn’t like me to hear about Starfleet too much, thought it went against God to be messing around in space. I got bits and pieces when I got older but by that time everybody figured I knew stuff like this already and I was too embarrassed to ask.”

They don’t seem entirely convinced, and Daniela mutters something in Spanish under her breath that Steve doesn’t catch, but he thinks they’re just chalking it up to the fact that he’s an oddball in mostly nonthreatening ways, and he can live with that. Waking up in 2256 is surprisingly not that different from waking up in 2011. Still, he’s got an awful lot of history to catch up on.

~

The second time Steve meets Jim, a few weeks later, it’s the 3am shift on a Sunday and there’s no one else in the shop. He sells Jim a mocha and then tries not to stare, tries not to wonder what Jim is doing alone in a coffee shop at this time of night. The man sits at a corner table, stares at his cup, and doesn’t even take a sip. Finally, Steve ventures over.

“Something wrong with your drink?” he asks awkwardly. Jim looks up, startled.

“Uh, no. At least, I dunno. I haven’t tried it yet.” Jim smiles widely, but it seems forced, nothing like his easy grin from the last time he was here. “Don’t worry about it.”

Steve knows it’s none of his business, but he can’t help asking, “Are you okay?”

Jim snorts as if he must be joking. “Just great.” Then his expression softens slightly, although he still looks brittle somehow. “Wow, you really didn’t recognize my name when I was here before, did you?”

“Jim Kirk?” Steve says, not bothering to pretend he doesn’t remember. “Yeah, the others said something about it when you left. Sorry, I guess I just don’t know much about Starfleet.”

“No, that’s okay.” Jim sighs. “It’s a nice change, actually. I spent the whole fucking day standing in front of a bunch of stuffed shirts and talking about the Kirk family legacy. At least I can order a mocha without wondering whether I’m letting my father down by not drinking gourmet dark roast or some shit like that.”

Steve isn’t sure how to respond. He vaguely remembers noticing more traffic around the city earlier and thinks they’re might have been a big memorial ceremony or something. “Was that the, uh, event going on today?”

“Oh yeah, that was it,” Jim confirms bitterly. “The anniversary. And, of course, my birthday.”

“Happy birthday?” It’s the wrong thing to say, Steve knows, but what else do you say when you find out it’s someone’s birthday?

Jim’s mouth twists, and he finally picks up his mocha and chugs half of it without even stopping. “Gee, thanks. Just what I always wanted – daddy issues.”

Oh, Steve thinks to himself. So maybe that’s why this guy reminds him of Tony.

~

The third time they meet is about an hour after the second time, after the early-morning shift change happens and Steve walks out the door to see Jim sitting on a bench outside, still holding his empty mocha cup.

“So I was thinking,” Jim says, all in a rush. “I don’t usually say shit like this when I’m sober but it’s been such a day and you have no idea who I am so I know it won’t be a pity fuck, or actually it probably will be but not the way it could be, and I don’t even know if you do guys but I’ve got nothing to lose and I don’t even know your name and you probably have to work tomorrow or something or maybe, I dunno, you actually have standards, Bones says some people have those, but do you want to come home with me?”

Steve hasn’t hooked up with a guy since the army, but he looks at the man in front of him, hope shining brightly in eyes as blue and as lonely as Steve’s own, and thinks, why the hell not?


End file.
